But actually his comments were not quite so condemning. ”I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we are clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change,” Lovelock said in the interview. He acknowledges our increasing evolutionary cleverness but doesn’t think it has gone far enough to be a match for our current predicament. Lovelock expects that it is going to take some catastrophic event—the collapse of a giant glacier in Antartica or the return of a dust bowl in the US midwest— before humanity will get motivated and act to do something about climate change.

A fundamental premise of FOUR YEARS. GO. is that we actually are evolved enough as a species to successfully tackle climate change as well as a whole array of other social and environmental problems confronting us; that as a species we do now have the ability to foresee and choose our future; that empowered with nearly instantaneous global communication and with a deep understanding that everything is connected to everything else we as a species have now evolved our cleverness to where we are a match for our predicament. Armed with this new ability, it is crazy to wait for catastrophe. The task is to choose to motivate ourselves, now. That is what FOUR YEARS. GO. is about.

And at a very deep level an additional premise of FOUR YEARS. GO. is something like, we now have the ability to jump start our own evolution. That we are entering into a new evolutionary space, where evolution isn’t just something that unfolds and happens to us but that it is a process of which we, as humanity, are now agents and participants. So, even if as Lovelock says we haven’t quite evolved far enough yet, then the task is to provoke that evolution, now. That’s also what FOUR YEARS. GO. is about.

R. Browne

Unlock Love, receive knowledge of the Real
Right Action will flow through you

R. Browne

Unlock Love, receive knowledge of the Real
Right Action will flow through you

Human Truth

It was said in the previous chapter that by intellating we fulfil the cerebral cortex, and the result, inevitably, is truth. As a first step to supraconsciousness we have to be prepared to accept that this is so. Ask yourself whether our faculty of knowing and reasoning has a useful function or not. If not – if it was acquired by accident and is of no real value to us – why have we kept it? Clearly, at least part of it has been of value, in the sense that it has enabled us to survive, and multiply, and, on the face of it, has brought many benefits. Then why is the world in chaotic conflict? Because we have used the postconscious – that part which is available to us – to give us what we consciously but automatically and separately desire. We took over that part of our postconscious faculty, but it is very much the lesser part so that the reasoning-power of the conscious mind remains limited and still persists in reaching false conclusions. This cannot be right for a species possessing a supreme faculty whose function is truth. A human mind which reaches false conclusions is not working properly or fully, or freely. To say otherwise is tantamount to claiming that the purpose and function of an engine is to break down. Neither a human mind nor any thinking apparatus can reason reliably if part of its function is to reason falsely. Truth is indispensable to reason, for reason that is not reliable is worthless, and dangerous. But in the existing world at large many different theories are relied upon, many different opinions and beliefs held, various practices followed, nearly all of which are incomplete and false.

Having accepted that our purpose is the fulfillment of truth, the next step towards supraconsciousness is to abnegate self and become bound by truth. The self does not then regard itself and its personal reality as being its greatest concern. It realises that a whole reality which is unitedly cared for by all selves is far better than that which results from each self caring mainly for itself. Experience of the world right up to the present moment demonstrates the painful results of the latter, and we have probably always inwardly known that the former is right.

To be truly human, the individual must be bound by truth. Since truth is fulfillment of the postconscious, the human true individual has to be closely identified with the postconscious. This requires that the self be re-positioned within the postconscious, whose innermost workings must remain unconscious to the self but to whose reasoning the self must be most immediately subject. The self is now subject to the postconscious, strengthened by the latter’s will, and has a superior relationship to the old conscious mind which, in turn, has a superior relationship to the new subconscious instinct established under this new arrangement as well as to the old preconscious instinct. This new relationship between the postconscious mind and the self’s true supraconsciousness, see Figure 10 :

Utter awareness of truth carries absolute responsibility to abide by that truth. The self which puts itself in the position of supraconsciousness voluntarily undertakes that responsibility, but it has the disadvantage of still existing in a false reality. So though it wishes to shoulder that responsibility in all things, whilst that self’s mind exists in automatic reality it is obliged, for the sake of survival, to conform superficially to that reality. Individuals who are supraconscious cannot deny truth and are bound to work towards an ideal reality. Until that ideal is realised and whilst it is being prepared for, such individuals can only accept and carry that responsibility in their minds. If compelled to be false in the here and now they are aware of being, for the present, inescapably so. But when supraconsciousness has prevailed and the ideal society exists, there shall be no necessity to be false. The ideal shall then be responsibly and unswervingly maintained because supraconscious minds can not conceivably betray it, and practical reality shall then fully reflect both our truth and our responsible will.

There are many pressures opposed to the ideal, of course, chief of which is the conviction that the ideal could not work – it would break down because of the innate faults and crude appetites of human beings. But those faults and appetites derive from instinct and necessarily belong in an automatic reality founded on instinct. It is important to realise that just as animals are interlocked with their compulsive instinct for survival, supraconscious humanity would be inseparable from truth, and that would work for their survival which, I repeat, the Machine threatens. Another obstacle is inertia, the sheer disinclination to make the great effort undoubtedly required, which can be overcome only by the awakening of a contrary desire and determination. Yet another great pressure opposed to the ideal comes from the fact that our present satisfactions are widely adapted to Machine delights. It seems that individuals can visualise reality changing but not themselves. So automatic progress is usually welcomed because it offers prospect of yet more similar delights, whilst moral reforms are rejected because they seem to represent self-sacrifice. The answer to this is to raise the level of awareness of other and better satisfactions which the ideal would bring.

Supraconsciousness has to be self-taught because being human today is subject to a natural priority of attention given to the relationship between instinct or gut-feeling and actual reality. The postconscious speaks to our conscious selves from the other side, in another way relating to an ideal reality which does not yet exist. It is like a new music which our ears are not attuned to, so that we do not understand it, and which we resist because it is unfamiliar. Intellation and supraconsciousness is listening to this music and absorbing the new understanding it brings.

Consider again the position of the soldier, priest, economist or terrorist, mentioned in Chapter 8. Their duties were given to them by the Machine and their motivation comes from humanity’s automatically evolved history. As a result of them becoming supraconscious, true morality would be their motivation. The soldier could no longer believe in his profession; the priest must become a radical reformer; the economist must put morality before market forces; and the terrorist must turn away from violence, realising that only good means can be justified by good ends and that local inhumanities will never be eradicated until our whole reality is humantrue.